LEWISTON — Bates College Museum of Art’s current exhibit titled “At Home and Abroad: Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection,” brings personal insight into the world of the artist. Through photographs, memorabilia and early drawings, we see an intimate view of Hartley.
There are two important Hartley exhibits this summer. The second exhibit, at Colby College in Waterville, focuses on Hartley’s major works. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Colby, the exhibit will open July 8. Hartley lovers will want to see both exhibits this summer.
The exhibit at Bates is significant, although small compared to the up-coming Colby exhibit. It is important because Marsden Hartley wanted to be remembered in Lewiston, where he was born in 1877, and because the personal memorabilia in the Bates exhibit reveals an intimate side of Hartley to the public. Hartley traveled all over the world, but at the end of his life returned to Maine and lived in the small, rural town called Corea. He declared himself “The painter from Maine,” before his death in Ellsworth in 1943. Hartley’s quote is how he wanted to be remembered.
The fascinating part of the exhibit at Bates is how the letters reveal the artist’s personal tastes in art and literature, and also show him to be an excellent writer.
Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson became his mentors, both spiritually and intellectually. Hartley’s essays in periodicals of his day collected in the book “Adventures in the Arts,” originally printed in such magazines as “Art and Archeology,” “The Nation” and “The New Republic,” also display his interests and writing abilities.
Bates College was the fortunate beneficiary of the Marsden Hartley Estate in 1951. In 1955, his favorite niece, Norma Berger, made an additional gift of 99 drawings to the permanent collection establishing Bates as the largest archive of the artist’s works in the drawing medium. In fact, Bates loaned a dozen of its Hartley drawings to the Metropolitan/Colby exhibit.
Other significant objects on view at Bates are samples of textiles he collected, bronze figurines, and a few paintings by his friends and peers: Carl Sprinchorn, Mark Tobey, George Platt Lynes and Peggy Bacon.
Hartley had a tragic childhood. His parents, Eliza and Thomas Hartley, emigrated from Manchester, England, to Lewiston to work in the mills. There were nine children and his mother died when Hartley was only 8. His father was later remarried to a woman whose last name was Marsden. Hartley, whose original name was Edmund, changed his first name to honor her.
In 1909, Hartley was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz and had his first exhibition at Stieglitz’s Gallery 291 in New York City.
In Paris in 1912, he emersed himself in modern art and an interesting oil painting in the Bates exhibit — on loan from the Rose Art Gallery of Brandeis University — titled “Musical Theme (Oriental symphony)” reveals Hartley’s mystical interest in abstract symbols. Objects seem to float across the canvas, similar in style to Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was recognized for painting what was considered one of the earliest purely abstract paintings.
Hartley experimented with different styles before his own distinctive, powerful modern American expressionism emerged.
This is a scholars’ exhibit of quiet intensity that shows the personal side of Marsden Hartley.
A catalogue of Hartley’s early drawings is available at the museum, and a special gem of a poetry book introduced by Synnove Hougham, an early curator at the Treat Gallery of Bates College in 1976, titled “Eight Poems and One Essay,” by Marsden Hartley, shows his poignant and wonderful ability to write.
The Bates College Hartley exhibit comes down Oct. 7 and is worth trip to see.
Summer Hours: Monday- Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free of charge. The gallery is located at 75 Russell St.
